Category Archives: ACTUALITY

The Washington-Ankara partnership

From left, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster arrive for a joint news conference between President Donald Trump and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in the East Room of the White … more >

By Peter Tase – – Tuesday, March 6, 2018

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Demonstrative of what is widely understood as a pressing need for rapprochement between the U.S. and Turkey, last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson was welcomed in Ankara by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan and Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlt avuoglu. A day prior, U. S. Defense Secretary James N. Mattis had a lengthy meeting in Brussels with Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli, on the sidelines of the NATO Defense Ministers Conference.

Perhaps not as proactive as circumstances may demand, however, the interaction amongst top-level U.S. and Turkish officials is, nevertheless, testimony to the indispensable strategic partnership that has existed for more than 60 years between Washington and Ankara. The currently prioritized face-to-face dialogue is concrete recognition of the strategic importance that Ankara continues to garner.

The United States’s bilateral alliance with Turkey has proven to be critical in the realm of the multifaceted strategic cooperation in defense that necessarily exists in the region and in terms of the Middle East security matrix, addressing the war against ISIS, Syria’s complex security challenges and cooperation in multilateral organizations such as NATO, G20 and other platforms.

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The United States should reverse its policy of co-operation with the Kurdish militant People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria and invest in its relationship with Turkey in order to be able to counteract future Russian or Iranian influence in the region, Peter Tase, a research fellow at the Washington DC-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, wrote.

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The ongoing war in Syria coupled with the United States’ failure to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a radical Muslim cleric indicted by Turkish prosecutors for, among a plethora of other grave offenses, staging last year’s attempted coup d’etat against the democratically elected government of Turkey, have badly deteriorated bilateral cooperation between the two nations.

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About Me

A Princeton PhD, was a US diplomat for over 20 years, mostly in Eastern Europe, and was promoted to the Senior Foreign Service in 1997. For the Open World Leadership Center, he speaks with its delegates from Europe/Eurasia on the topic, “E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United” (http://johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com/2017/03/notes-and-references-for-discussion-e.html). Affiliated with Georgetown University (http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/jhb7/) for over ten years, he still shares ideas with students about public diplomacy. The papers of his deceased father — poet and diplomat John L. Brown — are stored at Georgetown University Special Collections at the Lauinger Library. They are manuscript materials valuable to scholars interested in post-WWII U.S.-European cultural relations. This blog is dedicated to him, Dr. John L. Brown, a remarkable linguist/humanist who wrote in the Foreign Service Journal (1964) — years before “soft power” was ever coined — that “The CAO [Cultural Affairs Officer] soon comes to realize that his job is really a form of love-making and that making love is never really successful unless both partners are participating.”

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Peter Tase: Azerbaijan’s democratic standards matured

Presidential election period is an important event that ensures stability and progress in government institutions and preserves well being among all Azerbaijani citizens, political analyst and international relations expert at the Milwaukee-based Marquette University Peter Tase told Trend.

He further said that Azerbaijan’s democratic standards have matured, and the country has stable economic growth.

Next presidential election in Azerbaijan is to be held on April 11, 2018, according to an order signed Feb. 5 by the country’s President Ilham Aliyev. According to the Calendar Plan of Azerbaijan’s Central Election Commission (CEC), pre-election campaigning starts 23 days prior to the voting day and is stopped 24 hours before the start of voting. Thus, the campaigning will start on March 19 and end at 08:00 (local time) on April 10.

“This year will mark impressive accomplishments in the strengthening of Azerbaijani democracy, essential progress in the war against poverty and unemployment, as well as make Azerbaijan a nation that can be used as an example in the region for its transparent institutions and consolidated democratic standards,” Tase said.

Tase further noted that the major improvements and accomplishments in the infrastructure, education policies, tourism and public diplomacy, make incumbent President Ilham Aliyev the best candidate and certainly ensure his upcoming electoral victory in 2018. …

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Spero News contributor Peter Tase, a widely traveled lecturer on geopolitical topics, delivered a keynote lecture at the International University of Travnik (IUT) in Bosnia and Herzegovina that focused on what he asserts are the values of multiculturalism promoted by Azerbaijan that were assailed by Armenia during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Since his presentation in October, Tase told Spero News, “Since the early Middle Ages, the dominant current of Islam among Azerbaijani religious scholars has been Tasawwuf — the traditional Islamic teaching of self-improvement and spirituality— which in the West is better known as Sufism. Sufism promotes love, brotherhood, and harmony with people, regardless of their ethnic and religious identity, and has played a major role throughout the Islamic world in spreading tolerance towards other religions, cultures, and races.”

Tase recently returned from a trip to western Azerbaijan where he visited the Tartar region that borders on the region controlled by Armenia.

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